


ríastrad

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters: Gold Rush!AU [13]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Abolitionist!Feanor, Cú Chulainn parallels, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, In a way, Irish Mythology - Freeform, Morgoth being the literal worst, Non-Linear Narrative, Politics, Slavery, so that's one unproblematic trait, the title is the name for Cú Chulainn's battle frenzies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-18 22:30:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18127310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Justice is never where Feanor stops. (How Feanor and Rumil began their friendship, and Feanor and Morgoth began their bitter rivalry.)





	ríastrad

**Author's Note:**

> Set in 1832. Obviously nothing else about this is very 1832-ish, but I suppose you'll manage.

_“And he was not like other boys,_ a stóirín _. He took the place of the guard-dog he killed, and he fulfilled his duty so well that he was never forgotten.”_

_“Why did he kill the dog, Athair?”_

_“I think, Feanor, that he did not know his own strength.”_

“My son,” Finwe says—and there it is, the crossroads of yearned-for affection and resentful doubt—“The Councilman’s brother joins him for dinner tonight.”

“What of it?” Feanor is twenty-five years old. In twenty-five years more, he will not equal his father’s political prowess, his smooth diplomacy. He will not wish to; he certainly does not wish to  _now_.

Finwe’s eyes are as keen as ever, but there is no anger in them. “They have been estranged for many years, so this occasion is a joyful one.” Finwe waits, doubtless wishing that brotherly reconciliation should make an impression, then adds, “We have been invited to join him.”

“Councilman Manwe will be governor in ten years, that much is painfully obvious. Let him invite me to sup with him then.”

“Feanor.”

“You are right, Athair. I would not attend then, either.”

No anger, still. “Feanor, I implore you—it is right that I should bring my eldest son to such events, to show how my family flourishes—”

“ _Does_  your family flourish?” But that is too far, too bitter, and though Feanor feels it in his heart he would not wound his father with it yet. “Very well, Athair. If this is all that shall please you. I will attend, but I will beg leave for Nerdanel not to, since she is wearied in the evenings.”

“Indis will be happy to stay and see to her comfort. She misses Finarfin, since his marriage, and—”

“I have changed my mind—Nerdanel shall come.”

 

_“What does that word mean?”_

_“It means a battle-frenzy. He would be overcome by a fury and passion so great that all his foes fled away. His face became quite hideous, I believe.”_

_“Athair…”_

_“Does it trouble you? I am sorry. It is only a story.”_

_“No, I am not troubled. I only think—I think it must have hurt.”_

 

His head aches under the golden lights. Nerdanel is shy beside him; she swore that she had nothing suitable to wear. Since Feanor will not take his father’s money, all of his own must go towards paying off the farm. A blacksmith’s work yields little enough, even when he is doing his best to offset it with design commissions. Horses need shoes. Fires need pokers. These things are not beautiful, but they suffice. Gates and lantern sconces are better; fine work with metal and gems is what he likes best.  

 _A blacksmith?_ His father had been irate, when he left his apprenticeship with a silver merchant.  _All this, and you descend—_

_Descend? I earn with my hands and my mind, not by licking the boots of those who scorn us!_

It is better not to remember the rest of that fight, or any other. Now, they are guests in the city for two weeks—his father had desired to better know his two grandsons—and, as is his wont, Feanor hates every brick, every cobblestone.

Even more, he hates the dinner guests.

 

The Councilman is grave and wise and just a shade patronizing. He marvels at the resilience and ingenuity of the Irish! Their passions and their craft! Did not Feanor’s own mother, Miriel—

Feanor slams his wineglass down at that, and maybe it is just as well that Manwe’s brother arrives belatedly in the pause that follows.

(Or maybe, seen through the lens of time, it isn’t.)

 

Melkor Bauglir bows low over the ladies’ hands. He clasps Feanor’s in both of his, pressing as though his fingers seek to detect the patterns of a craftsman’s bones.

He smiles all the while.

 

 “You may bid your manservant dine with my people,” Manwe says, over the fish course. Feanor’s eyes flit, not for the first time, to the silent, dark-skinned man standing behind Melkor’s chair.

Melkor lifts an eyebrow. “Indeed? So considerate. Do you hear that, Rumil? You may leave me.”

“Thank you, sir,” Rumil says, with his eyes on the ground. When he turns, his neck seems stiff and laden.

Feanor narrows his eyes.

 

Coffee is served in Manwe’s eggshell-thin cups. Nerdanel and Indis sit apart on a chaise-longue, sipping at ices and making conversation that is stilted, without Maedhros and Maglor to divert them.

Feanor, skin prickling beneath Bauglir’s gaze, is fiercely glad that his sons are tucked safely in their beds, under the care of their nurses.

 

_“Did he have any children?”_

_“It says here, he had a son.”_

_“And did he love his son? He must have—"_

_“Feanor, I think I chose wrongly. This is a story for someone rather older. Perhaps when you are a few years—"_

_“Athair! Please. I can bear it. What happened to his son?”_

_“He killed him. It was an accident. He did not know him until it was too late.”_

 

Coffee turns to wine. The wine is strong. Feanor’s head swims with it. Nerdanel sips; she scarcely ate at dinner. Feanor knows she is expecting, even if the bell-shaped skirt of her gown conceals it. He has not yet told his father.

_Three sons! Ah, Feanor—we are so alike._

That is what his father would say, and then  _he_  would say something cruel.

“I envy you, my dear,” Indis is saying, without malice. “You’re bold to stave off wearing corsets as long as you can.”

Is this an insult? Before he can decide—and intervene in the ladies’ conversation, which is not strictly proper—a heavy, pale hand falls on his shoulder.

“Feanor.”

He would throw that hand aside, or cut it off. He has been plagued with such violent thoughts since childhood, and for the first time, they seem apt. Suited like a bullet to the smoke-heated barrel of a gun.

“Feanor,” Melkor says again. “I wish to see your work. Your father tells me it is beyond compare, for its kind.”

The sneer! The simper, coiled down into something darker. Feanor’s chest tightens with rage. He shakes off Melkor’s hand—a mercy, if the man only knew it—and says coldly, “I am not in the city to strike with my hammer.”

“Only with your tongue?”

“Perhaps. Excuse me.”

 

_“The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream.”_

 

“Are you ashamed of me, Nerdanel?”

She lies on her side, away from him. Now, at his words, her right shoulder draws closer to her ear. Hunched and protective.

It is not the answer Feanor wants. He does not touch her yet, though he wants that, too. “Nerdanel?”

“I am not ashamed,” she whispers. Her voice has a shape, he thinks. A shape he can make out even in the dark. Sound is like that to both of them: something seen as well as heard, part of their artistry. “I am only afraid. Am I not allowed to be afraid?”

He touches her now—his palm splayed over her spine, each fingertip a point of heat. “What are you afraid of? I am quick with my fists. I can handle a gun.”

She rolls over sharply, displacing his hand, facing him. Her breath is hot on his face when she snaps, “I do not want you to handle a gun, Feanor! I want you to be  _sensible_.”

“You ask the one thing I cannot give.” But he circles her shoulders with his arm and draws her close, so that her head is tucked beneath his chin. She does not stop him.

“Then,” she whispers, her voice muffled and her lips brushing the dent in his clavicle, “Do what you know to be right. That, and no more.”

“I do not take your meaning.” This, against her hair.

“I think you do. There is a difference between what God’s justice demands of you, and what your pride would desire.” She pulls away but he holds her fast. “Feanor, think of your sons.”

He is a little angry, to hear that. “Think of my sons? I do nothing else but think of them. And you.”

“Then do not flaunt your success.”

“I have not even succeeded, yet.”

She relaxes in her arms, but it is weariness, he feels, not peace. “I know.”

“He is a slave, not a servant, Nerdanel.”

“So you told me.”

“I cannot…”

“And I told you, Feanor. I know.”

 

(He slipped out, when his father called for more wine. He found Rumil eating quietly in a corner of Manwe’s long hallway, since the other servants would not abide his presence.

He knew that Melkor came from the south; he knew not how far.)

 

“So you believe me?”

“I do.”

Feanor’s hands tighten in their blankets—he would not lay such a bruising touch on her. “I saw it in the way he walked, and when I swore to him that he could trust me, he permitted me to see it. There was an iron collar, Nerdanel, fitted around his neck.”

 

He seeks Rumil again the next day, when Melkor and Manwe breakfast with the governor. The _current_ governor, Feanor corrects inwardly, sneering. Anyone with two eyes can read the ambition beneath Manwe’s honeyed smiles.

“You are enslaved,” Feanor says. He’s always been blunt. In twenty-five more years, he will be still. “I would help you to freedom, while you are in the friendlier north.”

He had half-expected Rumil to shy away in fear, but the man’s dark eyes are steady. “You cannot help me,” he says.

“I can.”

“My life,” Rumil says, “Is not my own.”

 

Rumil is a cartographer. His eyes discern the pattern of the world; his hands sketch it. Feanor’s heart thrills at such a talent—it is one he admires, one he desires to perfect himself.

But—

“What does Melkor want with maps?”

 

“The collar,” Feanor tells Nerdanel, pacing the room in disgust with Maglor in his arms, “Is designed so as not to be removed. Were an unskilled smith to strike it, spikes would release into his flesh.”

“Hush, Feanor! Your sons will hear you.”

Maglor’s eyes are calm, half-lidded. His round cheek is pillowed against Feanor’s chest, for he is comforted by his father’s heartbeat, even when his father is agitated. “I do not think, Nerdanel, that a child of two years can understand—”

“I would rather not risk it.”

“Nerdanel. Do you not comprehend his suffering? Once, he tried to escape it—and choking, returned to Melkor, begging for his _life_ —” He shudders, and Maglor whines. "I saw the scars."

Nerdanel knots her hands in the skirt of her corset-less gown. “Then,” she says firmly, “Do what you know to be right.”

 

“Finwe, your son will tell me little of his…smithing. My good young man, are you afraid that it is a somewhat paltry art? How came you to prefer it, to be already so soured on the higher affairs of  business?”

Feanor bares his teeth. This is not the same as a smile. “I am soured on nothing,” he says. “I simply choose to have no dealings with rot.”

Finwe and Manwe spend the rest of the engagement attempting to make light conversation about the weather, and Feanor is not invited to the Councilman’s home again.

 

“I did not think you would come,” Rumil whispers.

“We must be quiet,” Feanor says. “I have padded the horses’ hooves. Melkor still drinks brandy with a dozen of his brother’s allies.”

“My master leaves no town without making many friends,” Rumil says ruefully.

“You no longer need to call him master.” Feanor tosses him an extra greatcoat, one of Finwe’s. “Pull it high up over your face. You must not be recognized.”

 

_“He had no mastery over himself, when he was—taken. He would wake in a daze, to find walls of corpses piled high.”_

_“Yet always, they were people who had done wrong, were they not? Do not worry, Athair. I understand. It is only a story.”_

Nerdanel shuts the door of their bedroom, a smile rising on her lips. “So Rumil is safe?”

“I will not know for certain until he sends word. But I saw him to the edge of the city, yes.”

“Slavery is a curse on our land,” Nerdanel says. “How _can_ we be free and brave, while it overshadows us?”

Feanor takes her in his arms. “You think and hope as I do. We can never be free, Nerdanel, unless we know what binds us. _All_ of us.”

 _And Manwe is no better than Melkor_ , he thinks, but that would seem nigh to blasphemy, for Nerdanel. He does not say it aloud.

“So it is over?”

This is what she meant, when she asked him to choose between pride and principle.

(Feanor, of course, has always wanted both.)

 

_“And so, bleeding and weakened from his wounds, he knew that he was dying. But he would not face his foes, nor any man, from the vantage of his knees.”_

_“Why not?”_

_“Hush, or I shall never finish reading! But if you must—you see, he did not wish to appear weak. So it says here that he chained himself to a rock to stay upright.”_

_“And he died that way?”_

_“Yes. Yet he died in the way of his own choosing.”_

“You were a fool, to scoff at a blacksmith’s work,” Feanor says, and tosses the broken collar at Melkor’s feet.

**Author's Note:**

> a stóirín = little treasure


End file.
